4 Reasons that Social Media Services should Offer People, Not Software

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Anna

When I was asked last year to develop a social media marketing service, the first question they asked was whether I already had software in mind or if it needed to be built. I told them that the software had already been developed and it was free. This didn’t go over well at first; they’d always used premium social media software in the past.

“How good could it be if it’s free?” they asked.

I told them that it’s not only free, but it was also the best software available. I took the computer, typed in f-a-c-e-b-o-o-k-dot-c-o-m, and proceeded to explain why it wasn’t just about me being cheap, but that it’s also better to post to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest from facebook.com, twitter.com, plus.google.com, and pinterest.com.

Here’s why:

You Don’t Need a Shell on Top

With search engine marketing, there’s an argument that can be made that pulling in third-party data is a benefit. The sheer amounts of data available through the search engines and from outside sources makes it conceivable that there are benefits to using software to manage campaigns, track keywords (particularly for SEO reasons), and monitor results. Then again, the Google Adwords UI has become pretty darn slick in recent months, so I don’t think I’d even use software for that.

At least it’s debatable with search and other marketing arenas. On social, there’s simply no debate necessary. There is no software out there that makes posting, monitoring, and reporting results easier than the actual websites and mobile apps themselves. Are there benefits? Sure. There are also major drawbacks and too much room for error that makes them worthless.

A couple of years ago, they were effective because Facebook and Twitter hadn’t matured. Today, they’re doing just fine handling their own data, controlling their own posts, and making it easier to monitor.

It almost sorta kinda makes sense with a taco.

Don’t get me wrong. I use tools. I love Buffer for scheduling posts on Twitter to keep them spread out and on Facebook when I won’t be available to post myself. I like the multiple views available through software like Hootsuite. However, there are too many high-dollar shells being put on top of the interfaces that do nothing more than make the reports look pretty. What’s worse is that many of them attempt to prove their value by offering features such as content suggestions and automated posting. Scheduling and automation are two different things and there’s simply no need to take content suggestions from software (more on that later).

Social Plugins Hurt Websites

This one might make some software companies really upset with me, but it has to be said. You should never, ever, ever, ever, ever add plugins or wigdets to your website without two things: a really good reason and the backing of a major software company. Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – their plugins and widgets aren’t perfect, but at least they’re safe. Everything else – dump them.

The native widgets are all you need. It always amazes me when I see Facebook plugins, for example, that weren’t built by Facebook. There was a rise in popularity of the little ribbon at the bottom of pages for a while. Thankfully, most realized that they slow the page load times down and can cause errors on certain browsers. They also realized that they didn’t do anything useful other than give the marketing manager at the company something to show the boss and put unearned cash into the pockets of the company that sold it to them.

They don’t work. They aren’t effective. They do much more harm than good. Unfortunately, those are the best-case scenarios. In some cases, they can actually do true harm to a site as can be seen in the image to the right.

There’s a reason that social media companies develop software. It’s less expensive for them to support software than to employ the people necessary to make social media actually work for their clients. It’s sexy because it’s visual, tangible, and seems to be sophisticated. In other marketing arenas, software is often all that’s needed. In social media, it does nothing other than make people feel good.

Social Media is Creative. Software is Not.

As I hinted at before, when software is used to find content or determine what to post, the battle is already lost.

I’d put my team of specialists up against IBM’s Watson if it did social media management. Until a piece of software is able to craft a Facebook post or Tweet that has the ability to reach the minds of the audience rather than just reaching their feeds for the sake of reaching their feeds, software is not the solution for this.

Some would argue that it saves time from having to look for content to post. I would argue that the technology to do that has been around for a while. It’s called Google. There’s also RSS feed readers (NOT to post automatically, of course) that gives any industry plenty of content in just the same manner as the social software provides. This isn’t new technology.

The biggest challenge with this is that it takes the human eye out of the equation in many circumstances. Software, for all the good that it can do, does tend to make us lazy. It’s laziness that turns good pages mediocre. Manual vetting of content and inspiration that only comes to humans can turn a good page into a fantastic one.

“But, it saves time!”

That’s what some will say. I would argue that the five minutes it saves a day isn’t worth being half as effective.

Dashboards are Completely Overrated

The data is there. Facebook Insights aren’t perfect, but they present the data in an acceptable manner. Dashboards definitely do make things prettier. They also speed up the reporting process for marketing companies. However, they don’t understand nuance.

I’ve seen both sides. I’ve seen gorgeous automated reports and dashboards that didn’t tell the whole picture and I’ve seen manually-created reports and native dashboards that deliver the real results. A dashboard doesn’t know that the picture of a local attraction that received 50 likes, 15 shares, and 10 comments is less successful of a post than an inventory item that received 20 likes, 10 shares, and 5 comments, particularly if that inventory item was sold the day after it was posted.

The information provided by the social sites themselves manually gathered and analyzed by humans gives a much more accurate picture of the effectiveness of a campaign than any dashboard or report. It doesn’t matter how pretty the graphs are. It’s still only numbers being provided in a different format. Reports need to say more than just the numbers. They need to demonstrate success.

Is Social Media Driving You Mad?

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Anna

A recent Fox News article reported that social media causes people stress and researchers have actually developed the term “social media anxiety.” Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, and Reddit all are great social media sites if used properly, but are people too dependent on them?

Finding a balance between the online world and the real world is the most important thing. Cell phones support social media apps and people feel the urge to check them every few minutes. Do you ever feel that mini heart attack you get when you misplace your cell phone?

People can share pictures, music, videos, and other content with their friends on social media. Face to face interaction is becoming a thing of the past. Why visit your grandparents when you can talk to them via Skype? There’s not much reason to enter the real world when you have 24-hour access to your friends on your computer.

Do you find yourself up late at night browsing Pinterest looking for the perfect piece of fashion to share with your friends? Are you browsing the dozens of pictures of delicious food on Instagram? Doesn’t it suck that you are stuck at home in your pajamas browsing through pictures of your friends on vacation and you feel as if you’re missing out? These are some of the telltale signs that you could be suffering from social media anxiety.

Social media sites have caused me a bit of anxiety in the past. I spent too much time on Facebook comparing myself to others. Using Facebook to keep up with others is tiring and does not help you with you social media anxiety. Now, I rarely spend time on Facebook, but when I do, I use it to connect to friends or check out important events. Reducing the amount of time I spent on these social media sites relieved me of anxiety.

I think we all need a break from social media sometimes. Here are some ways to prevent social media anxiety:

Fox News suggests limiting use to only a few sites, instead of all of them. “Step back and consider which sites are most satisfying. You don’t have to use them all,” the article says.
Integrate your social media sites. Twitter and Instagram can be connected to Facebook. You will still be able to update your profiles, without spending time scanning though separate newsfeeds.
Limit the amount of friends on your social media sites. Only add your close friends.
You can use time blockers such as StayFocused to increase your productivity online.
Keep the details of your love life off social media!
Take time to do things in the physical world. Be active!
Decrease the frequency of your updates
Steer clear of arguing on social media and share positive updates instead
Use Facebook to connect with friends, don’t use it to compare yourself with others

Social media is great tool if used in a productive manner, if you spend too much time on social media, you will isolate yourself. Give yourself time to unplug and stop worrying about what is going on in the social media world!

Stop Treating Mobile Like Social Media’s Ugly Red-Headed Step-Sister

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Anna

Raise your hand if you remember looking to web site analytics to decide if you needed a “mobile strategy”. Honestly, that ship has sailed.

If your consumers are (and if they aren’t, just blink and they will be) deeply engaged in social media, you have no choice about your brand’s mobile strategy. Your consumers have decided for you. Consider that Facebook has more than 157 million mobile-only users today. This number is growing by 25 million a quarter. At this rate, they will surpass a quarter billion by the end of 2013. That’s more than the total number of mobile-only people who use Twitter.

Sixty-five percent of monthly users on Facebook and 71 percent on Twitter are mobile. And, according to Nielsen, 30 percent of all the time spent on mobile devices last year was on social networks.

So, let me ask: Are your social media efforts optimized for social+mobile consumers? If not, why not? And, more pertinently, are your programs even working for your social+mobile consumers?

Facebook has smartly declared itself a mobile company; Twitter doesn’t need to declare it, it already is. Consumer trends aren’t the only reason the big guys are now mobile-first. Mobile stream advertising is simply more effective. Facebook has shared that sponsored posts in the mobile news feed are exponentially more effective than right rail ads. And these ads improve another 120% when they include photos, video or interactivity.

The success of mobile as a right rail-free advertising platform is only one of many reasons why Facebook has very clearly stated that the future of advertising on its platform is in the news feed (the Facebook stream). Despite all these sign posts, the lion share of today’s Facebook media dollars are spent on right rail advertising. While that is beginning to change, brands taking a mobile first, news feed-centric approach to Facebook are still too sparse in number.

While social streams may feel like they are constantly moving faster and in unpredictable directions, as an industry we shouldn’t wait to jump in. Facebook and Twitter iterate so quickly, always learning and applying insights, mostly from mobile, to both their customer experience and marketing tools. We now see the social desktop experience as secondary to mobile for both consumers and platforms.

This mobile/social shift forces marketers to rethink their approach yet again. To borrow from Jeremiah Owyang at Altimeter, in social, all media must “converge”. These platforms force us to think about how our “owned” media and content will drive “earned” impressions through sharing and then how we will use “paid” media tactics to scale reach, engagement and outcomes. Every campaign requires we consider at least two and often we must plan for all three. When we add mobile to the mix it makes us, ah, weepy.

Here’s a tissue. It’s actually not so bad. The constraints of mobile, especially smartphones, make things simpler in some ways and surprisingly more effective. Mobile posts, especially rich ones, capture more attention and have a bigger impact on both consumers and on brand outcomes as they take over the full mobile screen. Mobile streams force us to simplify. These are not microsites or mobile apps, these are little snacks of content and a path to explore deeper. Thoughtful, rich in-stream content has been proven to drive higher engagement (especially among fans), increase reach through more People Talking About This (PTAT) and achieve higher Reach per Talker rates. And, surprisingly, consumers seem to prefer a mobile in-stream approach to social media advertising. As Facebook has enabled more and more advertising directly in the news feed, we’ve all feared consumer backlash. But we’ve found that rich in-stream media consistently receives exponentially less negative feedback than native posts

All social media marketing begins in the stream, even if you’re ultimately driving out. Just remember that your brand has been invited in and you must earn the right to stay. Mobile devices are themselves very personal and as a result, social streams are sacred real estate and should be respected as such. While consumers won’t tolerate blatant or irrelevant marketing, if you are strategic about fan acquisition and media buying strategies, your fans will have a level of affinity making them open to a wide range of posts from you, and making a mobile-first social approach the girl you should be taking to the dance.

What Social Media Accounts do You Need for Business and Why?

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Anna

The Internet is constantly changing. Just looking at the modifications made in the last few years between Google, Facebook, Pinterest and the mobile industry makes predicting how the next 12 months will look like pretty challenging. The beginning of social media completely transformed the way the internet looks today and this state of constant change forces businesses to adapt their approaches when interacting with customers. Staying relevant in this digital era requires you to adopt online marketing strategies that will connect the experience of your customers with the corresponding technologies that enable you to deliver the right content at the right time.

When considering your business online strategies remember that it all starts with your website – this is your own base that you will later link to or from other external points like the social media websites. Though getting social is an important part of your marketing efforts you should look at networking as just a mean to help you get your message out there and to drive the traffic back to your site.

There are almost 200 active social media websites at this point and more are being developed around the world every single day. Selecting the ones that most suit the nature of your business, products and services, and target readers is essential. Here are few of the most used social media accounts for business:

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social network of all with a total of 1.11 billion users and 751 million mobile users. The website was launched in February 2004 as a college network and later this became an event that forever changed the way we use the Internet.

Starting a Business Page on Facebook is pretty easy; just make sure you register it with the name of your business. It’s important to keep brand consistence around the Internet, so make sure to secure your company’s username for all social media you plan to use, even sometime in the future.

As soon as your page is created people can Like it and everything you post on your page will be available in their News Feeds. It’s a really powerful platform for businesses, local or global, and its interface makes it really easy for you to enlarge your network of Fans and reach an audience you wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging website with a total of 500 million users, each with over 200 followers in average. It offers a huge potential for businesses to market their products and services to the second widest audience in the world.

The posts or Tweets are short and limited to 140 characters, which makes people share their thoughts concisely and to the point. You can Tweet about interesting events, industry related news, products or services; you can search tweets via Hashtags (#) to see what people talk about; or check how your competitors are doing. If you have a business blog Twitter is a great medium to share links to your latest articles, useful tips, product reviews, etc.

On Twitter users Follow each other so it’s easier to build larger following, but if compared to Facebook the audience here is far less targeted. Still, because of its popularity, as well as simplicity, almost every business includes this social website in its online marketing efforts.

Google+

Google+ (Google Plus) is Google’s social network introduced in June 2011. If looking at the numbers, with only about 340 million active users this social network is behind Facebook or Twitter, but since it is Google’s product and Google is the largest search engine in the world, for every business that tries to rank higher in this engine’s results Google+ is a must; if not for connecting with customers, then for SEO purposes alone.

On Google+ you have Circles, Messenger, Hashtags; you can easily connect with customers on a more personal level starting Hangouts to discuss new products or solicit feedback on issues like customer service. The “negative side” of this social network is you cannot create a vanity URL for your business page.

LinkedIn is the largest professional social networking website, the best for business-to-business communication. It has over 200 million users from 200 countries and territories around the world.

Though initially viewed as a resume and job search website LinkedIn now offers great possibilities for businesses also. Aside from being able to research partners and employees before you start cooperating, you can also build great business connections with the important people and companies in your particular industry.

Your LinkedIn profile is like a resume for your business and it’s important to keep it up-to-date adding your company listing, contacts and other important information. To establish yourself as an authority in your field you can join industry related groups – at least few of the 1.5 million available – and contribute to the discussions and conversations.

YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website, another product of almighty Google, with around 1 billion users, 4 billion video views each day, and 72 hours of uploaded material per minute. This social networking site is lately gaining more currency in the business world, becoming a great platform for local and large businesses to reach bigger audiences delivering video based testimonials, how to guides and commercials promoting their products and services.

The latest updates in its design and features and the direction in which YouTube is developing put this social media among the few most essential in every business online marketing strategy.

Although it’s just 3 years old (launched in March 2010) as one of the fastest growing social websites Pinterest has now reached a total number of close to 50 million users who view 2.5 billion pages each month. If your business and products are visually appealing, this is your best social media site – a photo sharing platform designed as a vision board where people Pin images of things they find interesting like their favorite books, cloths, recipes, vacations, products, brands, you name it.

You can join Pinterest as business, create theme-based Boards and add Pins linking to interesting and useful posts and articles on your website or company blog; others will Re-Pin your pins and spread the good words about your business and products or services.

Social Media Friend or Foe? Some Use Social Media to Get Hired, Others to Get Fired

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Anna

In recent news there have been major developments on government spying on Americans through phone, email, and social media. Government is not the only group looking at personal social media accounts. We have soon discovered that anything that is posted online could be discovered by unintended audiences, especially employers.

An article on CNN features 10 stories of individuals who were fired based on their actions on social media. One story showcases a bitter anonymous barista’s blog featuring over 250 distasteful posts, yet 21,000 likes on Facebook. Needless to say, the power of social media turned this sour barista into an ex-barista. And she’s probably still bitter.

Taco Bell made headlines with a viral photo of its taco-licking employee. Taco Bell says the shells were disposed of, but who really knows. In any case, the damage has already been done. Taco Bell’s taco-licking employee was immediately fired and is no longer able to slobber on customer taco shells.

The article also posted a story about a bus driver in Georgia who lost his job for posting about a hungry middle school student. According to the bus driver, a student on his bus told him that he was unable to get lunch because he did not have the money to pay for it. The bus driver posted on the story on his Facebook page, along with his phone number, stating that he would come up with the forty cents needed to buy the student’s lunch. The post, which sounded like a mockery, got Johnny Cook in hot water with the superintendent and was ultimately fired.

After reading some of these stories, it’s important to know that what is posted online is not just for your eyes. Posting comments online can have permanent consequences, such as being terminated by your employer. For Taco Bell employee, I am thrilled that he posted the picture online because it gave customers an idea about what goes on in the kitchen. If he didn’t post the picture, his taco shell-licking antics would have just continued.

For stories such as the bus driver in Georgia, he shed light on a topic that is often out of mainstream media: hunger in the U.S. While the student states that his parents forgot to give him lunch money that day, many other students across the country do pass their days at school without lunch because their families cannot afford to give them lunch money. A Facebook page has been created to shed light on this phenomenon.

The bitter barista is also doing well! His blog continues to grow as it gains more followers. Bitter barista merchandise is being sold through the blog, and the blog is taking quotes from other bitter baristas or customers.

Whether it is the government or your boss watching over you, be sure that you are comfortable with anyone seeing what you are posting. Just like social media agencies use networks to promote businesses, individuals use social media to promote their own ideas. Next time you post on social media, make sure you think of the consequences and use posts as a way to propel your mission forward.